


Viceris solitudo

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Conquer [1]
Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Family, Romance, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3968473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's managing her a little bit. Not so much her as life for the immediate future. He can't imagine this. What it must be like to have it finally over. He can't imagine, so he makes plans down to the minute."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viceris solitudo

**Author's Note:**

> A Veritas (6 x 22) post-ep.

 

She sleeps right after. He doesn't expect it—at all—but the minute they're on the plane and buckled in, her head is on his shoulder, and she sleeps.

_Like the dead_ , he thinks and hates it immediately.

This is about life. Finally about life for her, a decade and a half on. He squeezes the fingers wrapped tight around his and kisses her temple. The move shifts her weight against him, but she doesn't stir until after the bounce of landing gear and the drag of the brakes. She doesn't stir until the cabin buzzes with a hundred phone conversations at once and the seatbelt sign dings off.

She hardly stirs even then. Her eyes open, wide and sudden. She takes a sharp breath in, and then it's his name, disoriented and not a little fearful. "Castle."

"Home," he says gently. "On the ground, anyway."

"Home," she repeats. She looks past him, out the window to the tarmac, like its some strange new world.

* * *

 

 

He's managing her a little bit. Not so much _her_ as life for the immediate future. He can't imagine this. What it must be like to have it finally over. He can't imagine, so he makes plans down to the minute. For now, anyway. Until she finds her feet. Until _she_ can imagine, he'll keep on making plans.

"Your place tonight?" He asks like he's just thought of it. Like he's open to whatever, but it's no good. She shoots him the covered smile that says she knows damned well he's already arranged it. "I thought you'd . . . I don't have to stay, if you want some time . . ."

She stops his mouth with hers. A fierce assault in full view of the town car driver, and that's not really like her.

"You have to stay." She pulls back. She gives him a scolding look, then another kind of kiss entirely. Sweet. "I want you to stay."

"Oh," he says, eyes closed and his lips curving up. "Good."

* * *

 

 

They stop by the loft first. That's orchestrated, too, and he gets another heavy look for his trouble.

She and her dad have something quiet planned, the day after next. Something she accomplished in the space of a 2-minute phone call from the airport.

_Time_ , she'd said, closing her eyes. Tired still, even after a flight's worth of solid sleep. _It's better if he has a little time to . . . absorb things._ She'd leaned into him then. Right into his chest. Heavy limbed and sighing. _Home. Let's go home._

She means this, he thinks, as she drops her keys in the bowl by the door like it's muscle memory and slips her coat into the closet. Home means here to her, every bit as much as her own place. He knows that, and though he doesn't begrudge her and her dad their own careful dynamic, he stubbornly wants family for her tonight. Family in this moment.

He thought he did, anyway, but he feels odd about it almost before the door swings closed behind him. He feels uncertain, but then she's at the center of a sea of red, tearing up when his mother says something low in her ear and hugging Alexis with her eyes closed tight.

He's on the outside and there's a rush of sound in his ears. An odd swell of terror and gratitude at the realization they've come too close too many times to not having this. He's on the outside, weary himself to the point that he has to plant a heavy palm on the counter to keep himself upright all of a sudden, but they're laughing, then.

He hears his mother talking about shoes. Alexis taking a few swaggering steps and arranging her face in a fierce, triumphant glare. A better than passable imitation of Kate. They're laughing, and it brings him out of the odd moment. His mother offering golf claps as Kate turns in a runway circle and tosses a smile to him over her shoulder.

"You hear that, Castle?" She lifts an eyebrow. "Badass on the evening news."

It brings him home.

* * *

 

She lapses back into a kind of weary silence once they're holed up at her place. She flips the locks and slides the chain home with no small satisfaction while he unpacks their take out on the counter.

She sheds her clothes along the way down the hall to the bedroom, dropping them as she goes. Turns and sticks her tongue out at him when she hears him laugh.

She's gone long enough that he's set the counter. The table seems wrong and he likes this here. Two places, side by side with a table runner and a couple of wine bottles pressed into service as candle holders. She's gone long enough that he's arranged and rearranged and he's on the verge of overdoing what's pretty perfect right now.

He leaves it instead. He goes after her, taking his time and making more noise than he needs to. He gathers up jacket and shirt and belt and bra, but he's at the bedroom door soon enough, tapping with light knuckles and clutching the bundle of clothes tight.

"I'm ok," she calls out, turning to the half open door, and she seems to be.

Her face is scrubbed clean, and her hair is coiled out of the way, half over her shoulder. She's been rifling through his drawer. That's half open, too, and his t-shirt hangs halfway down her thighs over worn flannel pants, all of it too warm for the weather. She crosses the room to him, batting at his arms until he lets her cast offs fall to the floor and wraps her up tight.

"You're ok," he whispers.

* * *

 

She's half asleep over her plate. Her wine sits, still mostly full, at her elbow. He tries more than once to send her to bed. He's cajoled and promised to clean up. Promised to bring her a plate or get up in the middle of the night if she wakes with a sudden craving, but she pokes him with her chopsticks and insists she's starving.

"And tired," she admits around a mouthful of sesame beef. "I didn't think I'd be so tired."

"What did you think you'd be?" It slips out. Awful— _awful_ —before it's even at the end of his tongue. Nosy and trampling and he feels like it's five years ago. Like his face is pressed to the glass and he's staring.

His mouth opens and closes on some kind of apology, but her head is cocked to the side. She's thinking about it. The wooden tips of her chopsticks come together and parti like she can tease the answer from the ether that way.

She sets them down, finally. She slides from her own stool and worms her way in between his body and the counter. She rucks up his shirt with impatient hands and slides her palms around his waist. She falls into him, slowly, wearily, completely.

"Alone," she says into the hollow of his shoulder. "I thought I'd be alone."

* * *

 

He changes in the bathroom. Another half-open door that's an odd kind of compromise. Mindfulness of _her_ in the kind of privacy they've long since abandoned.

He shuffles back to the bedroom, in flannel pants and t-shirt of his own, still drying his face. There's just the bedside lamp burning, and he's half expecting her to be asleep already, curled under a burden of blankets because she seems to crave warmth tonight.

But she's not asleep at all. She's on her back, arms flung wide. Her shoulders are bare and the edge of the sheet just barely covers the tops of her breasts.

He drifts to the bedside, helpless and uncertain. She stirs as soon as he's near, her eyes flickering open and a smile spreading across her face as she looks him up and down.

"Oh, no, Castle." She crooks her finger and he leans in. She snags the end of the drawstring on his pants and tugs. "None of that." She tugs harder. Toppling him and rolling their two bodies in a tangle of sheet. "None of that."

* * *

 

For all the weariness in her—for the slow drag of her hands and the soft, sloppy edge on the few words she manages—she's _thorough._ She traverses his body with fingers and lips and tongue. She pins his wrists to the bed, stilling him with silent insistence while she works her way from head to toe and back again.

She arrives at his lips again and the kiss she gives him is so wonderfully business-like—so wonderfully like she's checked half a dozen nagging items off her to-do list—that he laughs. She laughs with him, a drowsy, delighted sound as she slides from his body and pulls him with her.

She sinks into the pillows. Into the mattress and the sheets and the familiar space, winding her arms tight around him and breathing peace in his ear.

"It's over, Castle." He feels the curve of her lips against his jaw. The fizz of excitement even though her eyes are closing.

"It's over," he murmurs, distantly surprised to find the letters thick with sleep as they drop from his mouth to her skin.

"I'm so glad." It's faint. She's tipping over the edge now. Falling fast into rest. "So glad."

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I had planned something longer that started in a completely different place. I still might do a follow-up that explores the initial idea, but I'll mark this complete for now and if anything comes of that, I'll post it as a sequel. Thanks for reading.


End file.
